Focus Forward first announced its $200K Filmmaker Challenge at Sundance in January, and will be at LA Film Fest starting tomorrow (June 14-24) to encourage festival attendees and emerging talent to get in on the competition as well. “Short Films, Big Ideas” will ultimately be a series of 30 three-minute nonfiction films.

The selected films should “explore the incredible human power of ideas and invention” and will screen at a number of prestigious international film festivals, followed by day-and-date distribution online. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top five entries, with $100,000 going to the Grand Prize Winner.

Qualifying films for the Filmmaker Challenge are: “Three-minute end-to-end stories about people or organizations whose innovative efforts in medicine, computer science, robotics, engineering, green energy, or other fields of art and knowledge have had a significant positive impact on humanity.

Recent, cutting-edge inventions that are changing how we live today are of special interest.”100 Filmmaker Challenge films will be made available online through Vimeo, and will sit alongside the first 30 films produced by Focus Forward filmmakers. The Grand Prize and Jury Award winners will be announced at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.